Individual Liberty : Part 02, Chapter 03 : Anarchism and the State

1908

People

(1854 - 1939) ~ American Father of Individualist Anarchism : An individualist Anarchist, Tucker (1854Ð1939) was a person of intellect rather than of action, focusing on the development of his ideas and on the publication of books and journals, especially the journal Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order... (From : Anarchy Archives.) • "The evil to which this [tariff] monopoly gives rise might more properly be called misusury than usury, because it compels labor to pay, not exactly for the use of capital, but rather for the misuse of capital." (From : "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....) • "...Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished." (From : "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....) • "It has ever been the tendency of power to add to itself, to enlarge its sphere, to encroach beyond the limits set for it..." (From : "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)

Anarchism and the State

Mr. Henry Appleton, one of Liberty's original editorial
contributors, was obliged to cease to act in that capacity when he took a
position not in harmony with that of the editor on a point of great
importance, whereat he later complained, and tried to explain his view of the
controversy. In answering him, Mr. Tucker dealt with some essential questions
of principle:

I do not admit anything except the existence of the individual, as a
condition of his sovereignty. To say that the sovereignty of the individual
is conditioned by Liberty is simply another way of saying that it
is conditioned by itself. To condition it by the cost principle is equivalent
to instituting the cost principle by authority, - an attempted fusion of
Anarchism with State Socialism which I have always understood Mr. Appleton
to rebel against.

It is true that the affirmation of individual sovereignty is logically
precedent to protest against authority as such. But in practice they are
inseparable. To protest against the invasion of individual sovereignty is
necessarily to affirm individual sovereignty. The Anarchist always carries his
base of supplies with him. He cannot fight away from it. The moment he does so
he becomes an Archist. This protest contains all the affirmation that there
is. As I have pointed out to Comrade Lloyd, Anarchy has no side that is
affirmative in the sense of constructive. Neither as Anarchists nor - what is
practically the same thing - as individual sovereigns have we any constructive
work to do, though as progressive beings we have plenty of it. But, if we had
perfect liberty, we might, if we chose, remain utterly inactive and still be
individual sovereigns. Mr. Appleton's unenviable experiences are due to no
mistake of mine, but to his own folly in acknowledging the pertinence of the
hackneyed cry for construction, which loses none of its nonsense on the lips
of a Circuit Court Judge.

I base my assertion that the Chicago Communists are not Anarchists entirely
on the ground that Anarchism means a protest against every form of invasion.
(Whether this definition is etymologically correct I will show in the next
paragraph.) Those who protest against the existing political State,
with emphasis on the existing, are not Anarchists, but Archists. In objecting
to a special form or method of invasion, they tacitly acknowledge the
rightfulness of some other form or method of invasion. Proudhon never fought
any particular State; he fought the institution itself, as necessarily
negative to individual sovereignty, whatever form it may take. His use of the
word Anarchism shows that he considered it coextensive with individual
sovereignty. If his applications of it were directed against political
government, it was because he considered political government the only
invader of individual sovereignty worth talking about, having no knowledge of
Mr. Appleton's "comprehensive philosophy," which thinks it takes cognizance of
a "vast mountain of government outside of the organized State." The reason why
Most and Parsons are not Anarchists, while I am one, is because their
Communism is another State, while my voluntary cooperation is not a State at
all. It is a very easy matter to tell who is an Anarchist and who is not. One
question will always readily decide it. Do you believe in any form of
imposition upon the human will by force? If you do, you are not an Anarchist.
If you do not, you are an Anarchist. What can any one ask more reliable, more
scientific, than this?

Anarchy does not mean simply opposed to the archos, or political
leader. It means opposed to the arche. Now, arche in the first
instance, means beginning, origin. From this it comes to mean a
first principle, an element; then first place, supreme power,
sovereignty, dominion, command, authority; and finally a sovereignty, an
empire, a realm, a magistracy, a governmental office. Etymologically,
then, the word anarchy may have several meanings, among them, as Mr. Apppleton
says, without guiding principle, and to this use of the word I have never
objected, always striving, on the contrary, to interpret in accordance with
their definition the thought of those who so use it. But the word Anarchy as
a philosophical term and the word Anarchists as the name of a philosophical
sect were first appropriated in the sense of opposition to dominion, to
authority, and are so held by right of occupance, which fact makes any other
philosophical use of them improper and confusing. Therefore, as Mr. Appleton
does not make the political sphere coextensive with dominion or authority, he
cannot claim that Anarchy, when extended beyond the political sphere,
necessarily comes to mean without guiding principle, for it may mean,
and by appropriation does mean, without dominion, without authority.
Consequently it is a term which completely and scientifically covers the
individualistic protest.

I could scarcely name a word that has been more abused, misunderstood, and
misinterpreted than Individualism. Mr. Appleton makes so palpable a point
against himself in instancing the Protestant sects that it is really laughable
to see him try to use it against me. However it may be with the Protestant
sects, the one great Protestant body itself was born of protest, suckled by
protest, named after protest, and lived on protest until the days of its
usefulness were over. If such instances proved anything, plenty of them might
be cited against Mr. Appleton. For example, taking one of more recent date, I
might pertinently inquire which contributed most through their affirmations as
the Liberty Party or as Colonizationists, or those who defined themselves
through their protests as the Anti-Slavery Society or as Abolitionists.
Unquestionably the latter. And when human slavery in all its forms shall have
disappeared, I fancy that the credit of this victory will be given quite as
exclusively to the Anarchists and that these latter-day Colonizationists, of
whom Mr. Appleton has suddenly become so enamored, will be held as innocent
of its overthrow as are their predecessors and namesakes of the overthrow of
chattel slavery.

It is to be regretted that Mr. Appleton took up so much space with other
matters that he could not turn his "flood of light" into my "delusion" that
the State is the efficient cause of tyranny over individuals; for the question
whether this is a delusion or not is the very heart of the issue between us.
He has asserted that there is a vast mountain of government outside of the
organized State, and that our chief battle is with that; I, on the contrary,
have maintained that practically almost all the authority against which we
have to contend is exercised by the State, and that, when we have abolished
the State, the struggle for individual sovereignty will be well-nigh over. I
have shown that Mr. Appleton, to maintain his position, must point out this
vast mountain of government and tell us definitely what it is and how it acts,
and this is what the readers of Liberty have been waiting to see
him do. But he no more does it in his last article than in his first. And his
only attempt to dispute my statement that the State is the efficient cause of
tyranny over individuals is confined to two or three sentences which culminate
in the conclusion that the initial cause is the surrendering individual.
I have never denied it, and am charmed by the air of innocence with which this
substitution of initial for efficient is effected. Of initial
causes finite intelligence knows nothing; it can only know causes as more or
less remote. But using the word initial in the sense of remoter, I am willing
to admit, for the sake of the argument (though it is not a settled matter),
that the initial cause was the surrendering individual. Mr. Appleton doubtless
means voluntarily surrendering individual, for compulsory surrender would
imply the prior existence of a power to exact it, or a primitive form of
State. But the State, having come into existence through such voluntary
surrender, becomes a positive, strong, growing, encroaching institution, which
expands, not by further voluntary surrenders, but by exacting surrenders from
its individual subjects, and which contracts only as they successfully rebel.
That, at any rate, is what it is today and hence it is the efficient
cause of tyranny. The only sense, then, in which it is true that "the
individual is the proper objective point of reform" is this, - that he must be
penetrated with the Anarchistic idea and taught to rebel. But this is not what
Mr. Appleton means. If it were, his criticism would not be pertinent, for I
have never advocated any other method of abolishing the State. The logic of
his position compels another interpretation of his words, - namely that the
State cannot disappear until the individual is perfected. In saying which, Mr.
Appleton joins hands with those wise persons who admit that Anarchy will be
practicable when the millennium arrives. It is an utter abandonment of
Anarchistic Socialism. no doubt it is true that, if the individual could
perfect himself while the barriers to his perfection are standing, the State
would afterwards disappear. Perhaps, too, he could go to heaven, if he could
lift himself by his boot-straps.

If one must favor colonization, or localization, as Mr. Appleton calls it, as
a result of looking "seriously" into these matters, then he must have been
trifling with them for a long time. He has combatted colonization in these
columns more vigorously than ever I did or can, and not until comparatively
lately did he write anything seeming to favor it. Even then he declared that
he was not given over to the idea, and seemed only to be making a tentative
venture into a region which he had not before explored. If he has since become
a settler, it only indicates to my mind that he has not yet fathomed the real
cause of the people's wretchedness. That cause is State interference with
natural economic processes. The people are poor and robbed and enslaved, not
because "industry, commerce, and domicile are centralized," - in fact, such
centralization has, on the whole, greatly benefited them, - but because the
control of the conditions under which industry, commerce, and domicile are
exercised and enjoyed is centralized. The localization needed is not the
localization of persons in space, but of powers in persons, - that is, the
restriction of power to self and the abolition of power over others.
Government makes itself felt alike in country and in city, capital has it
usurious grip on the farm as surely as on the workshop, and the oppressions
and exactions of neither government nor capital can be avoided by migration.
The State is the enemy, and the best means of fighting it can only be found
in communities already existing. If there were no other reason for opposing
colonization, this in itself would be sufficient.